The Historic Origins of the Presbytery
Ross Graham
Extracted from Ordained Servant vol. 5, no. 1 (January 1996).
Introduction
In Os Guinness’ book, No God But God, one of the charges he levels against American evangelicals is that they suffer from historical amnesia. “Like Rip Van Winkle’s return from sleep, they act as if there were no jump from the last chapter of the book of Revelation to the first pages of the story of modern times.”
It is my fear that we could easily be swept along with the similar sentiment. If elders, sessions, presbyteries and general assemblies may be observed in the Scriptures and proved as the biblical model, then what we did last week in our session meeting or last month in our presbytery meeting is what they did or had in mind in the New Testament church.
But Presbyterian polity has developed like the rest of Reformed theology by applying logical reasoning to compare and contrast biblical information. As students of church history we cannot escape the observation that Presbyterianism was not the preferred form of government employed in the church by the beginning of the second century.
While not much historical information is available concerning the practice of ancient church polity, it is clear that godly and gifted men rose to positions of leadership in a system of sees and bishops. Even before the church became a ward of the state with the rise to power of Emperor Constantine in 318 A.D., an Episcopal form of government seems to be well entrenched. For the next twelve centuries this hierarchical episcopacy developed unimpeded and unchallenged.
It was the Protestant Reformation that called the system into question and took a fresh look at the structure of the church who were to be the leaders and what were to be the responsibilities and the privileges of the members. But how the modern systems of Presbyterian government developed may come as a surprise.
1. The Development of Early Reformed Polities
In the days of John Knox the word “Presbytery” was almost unknown in Scotland. The church was guided by ministers, elders and deacons working through kirk sessions, synods and general assemblies and helped by readers, exhorters and superintendents. Visitation was such an important matter to the ministers and elders in Scotland that they vested inordinate responsibility in these superintendents who would go from church to church inquiring about the spiritual health and condition of the people and the congregation.
There was great concern for determining the correct biblical structure and government in those days. Some argued that the office of superintendent could meet the continuing need for administration and jurisdiction. But others argued strongly against such an episcopacy with its separations between clergy and laity. They had for too long been familiar with those abuses and wanted no more of it. The solution that began to appeal to many by the middle of the sixteenth century was the presbytery.
It had not been necessary in Geneva, Switzerland, to create such a regional jurisdiction. The consistory and the Venerable Company dominated by John Calvin and Theodore Beza were quite sufficient for the limited population of the area. But in 1559 the Reformed in France invented what it called the colloquy as a body between the particular consistory and the provisional synod. Holland followed France in this structure and it was the classis which was placed between the local congregational consistory and the synod.
But the developments which gave rise to the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian structure took a different course. In 1579 the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland made a rather strange sounding declaration: “the Exercise may be judged a presbytery.” What was this Exercise to which they referred and how had it become a presbytery? It had come, as most things Reformed, from Calvin’s Geneva.
2. The Exercise
In his Ecclesiastical Ordinances published in 1541, John Calvin prescribed meetings which should take place every Friday morning. An eyewitness described how one minister expounded, another followed and then all members were allowed to make observations. Calvin actually makes a veiled reference to this practice in the Institutes 4.1.12 with a comment concerning I Corinthians 14:30. It is interesting to note that at one of these Friday morning gatherings held on October 16, 1551, minutes were taken, indication was given that the preaching text was John 8 and after another added, Bolsec, the heretic, argued his point which brought forth a long response from Calvin and led to the man’s arrest at the close of the meeting.
It was this practice which John Knox and the other exiled Protestant dissidents had observed while in Geneva. Upon their return they brought with them the concept and the practice in various forms and refinements. In 1550, John Lasco, pastoring a Reformed church for Protestant refugees in London, made provision for members of the congregation to bring in questions through their leaders. Records indicate that Knox’s English congregation in Geneva was required to assemble once every week to hear the Scriptures orderly expounded, “at which time it is lawful for every man to speak or inquire as God shall move his heart.”
In 1559 the book of order of the Reformed Church in France indicated that “at the meetings of the colloquies the ministers each in turn shall expound the word of God so that each may show how he practices the study of the Scriptures and the method and manner of treating the same.” Records of the English Puritans in London indicate that the Exercise was practiced at least from 1571 to 1574 and in typical Puritan penchant for order it was specified that the entire meeting last no longer than two hours.
But it was John Knox, upon his return to Scotland, who is to be credited with the development and refinement of this practice. An entire chapter of the first Book of Discipline of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, written largely by John Knox, is devoted to the Exercise. The first paragraph states its purpose:
To the end that the church of God may have a trail of men’s knowledge, judgments, graces and utterances...it is most important that in every town where schools and the repair of learned men are, that there be one certain day every week appointed to that exercise which St. Paul calleth prophesying.
The agenda for the Exercise was specific. Each group might choose their own day of the week and book of Scripture to be studied but beyond that they must follow the outline as Knox and the other Reformers interpreted it from I Corinthians 14:26-36. The Scripture for the day was read. One man was to concentrate on that one text, not to preach upon it but to be short in his exhortations and admonitions, that the time may be spent in opening the mind of the Holy Spirit in that place. Then a second man “added,” confirming, correcting or further explaining. A third man spoke briefly “in case some things were hid from one or the other of the previous speakers.” All the speakers were then “censured” or “admonished” by their peers, by which it must be assumed Knox meant there was theological and exegetical review. Lastly came the discussion of questions by all present. Strict warnings were directed against “debate and strife, curious...and unprofitable questions, all interpretations leading to heresy...or plain contradiction to any other Scripture.”
It was this practice, known among the English-speaking Reformed churches as the Exercise, which was going on weekly throughout the Reformed world at the time of their greatest growth. Knox and the other Reformers rested their case for these meetings on a study of I Corinthians 14.
29 Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others judge.
30 But if anything is revealed to another who sits by, let the first keep silent.
31 For you can all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be encouraged.
32 And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.
33 For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.These verses were, for Calvin and Knox, an important outworking of their development of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. They had seen in them a type of meeting ordained by God whereby men could learn to respond to his invitation to come to reason together with him and that in understanding, they might become mature men of the Word.
3. The Purpose of the Exercise
In a series of articles in the Covenanter Witness, Roy Blackwood summarizes what he believes to be the Reformers’ intentions for these meetings.
A. To develop leadership. The Reformers believed the Exercise would provide a setting which would help to identify and develop the gifts and graces which God had built into the lives of men whom he was adding daily to his Church. It would also call those gifts and graces to the attention of the church as a whole so that men with obvious qualifications would be promoted to the positions of leadership and responsibility which God had intended them to have.
B. To help young Christians grow into spiritual maturity. Not only could young people and new converts learn actual doctrine and content by listening and asking questions, they could also learn how to learn more by observing the study methods and growth patterns of the older Christians.
C. To recruit new leadership. By giving everyone a sense of personal responsibility for the continuing development of the church as a whole and by keeping the church mindful of practical needs and developing maturity in the lives of their leaders, the Exercise served to encourage men to desire church office.
D. To continue upgrading the competency of the teaching ministry. Blackwood muses, “what fully ordained and perhaps aging pastor today would welcome ‘censure’ even by his peers for his methods of study, preparation, delivery and doctrinal content? “
4. The Exercise Becomes the Presbytery But the Exercise continued to develop and took on a life of its own. This unique type of meeting, which honed the skills of ministers and identified the most competent of them in the process, began to take on authority and business aspects. It was noted in the minutes of the 1573 general assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland that a copy of the “Acts of Assembly” was to be given to every Exercise. In 1579 at the same assembly at which it was declared that “the Exercise may be judged a presbytery,” a matter of discipline was referred to a commissioner in one district “with the assistance of the brethren of the Exercise.”
Whether this was one of those slippery slopes in the history of Presbyterianism we may never know. But it may be observed from the records that the presbyteries which absorbed the Exercises began to take on significant ecclesiastical and administrative functions. Matters of discipline and questions from sessions were discussed on a regular basis, and visitations to local churches were assigned.
Two trends emerged as a more modern form of Presbyterian polity developed from the Exercise. The first was that the people did not continue to participate. The Exercises became colleges of ministers and elders. The second was that the meetings began to be held less frequently. Records of the assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland in 1647, the same year the Westminster Confession was completed, indicate that the presbytery was now meeting only once every two weeks or once a month.
5. The Development of the Presbytery in the New World
When the Scotch and Irish Presbyterians began to emigrate to the mid-Atlantic and southern colonies in significant numbers in the early part of the eighteenth century they did what their Presbyterian counterparts in Scotland had done a century and a half before. In 1706 they organized a General Presbytery of the ministers and elders of the local churches throughout the colonies. This first presbytery in the New World, organized under the leadership of Francis Makemie, was entirely independent of any Old World synod.
In 1707 their minutes describe the purpose of the Presbyterian Church in terms of supplying “desolate places when a minister is wanting, and the opportunity of doing good.” They also followed their Scotch-Irish brethren rather than the Reformed Churches in France and Holland in standing firmly for the separation of church and state.
One thing which did not cross the ocean with the Presbyterians was any notion of the historic roots of the presbytery in the practice of the Exercise. The General Presbytery had big plans. It would need to be divided, and new ones created, and a synod formed.
Ten years later in 1716 the first general synod was organized with three member presbyteries scattered from Long Island to Maryland known as the Synod of Philadelphia. This synod, collecting all the Presbyterians in the colonies to date, represented 19 ministers, 40 churches and 3000 communicants.
In another ten years the young church found itself in a vicious dispute concerning the standards of its beliefs. The English Puritan element in the church, which settled mostly in the New England colonies, favored less control and no particular creedal adherence. But the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who settled the middle and southern colonies and who comprised most of the new church’s constituency favored adherence to the Westminster Confession of Faith, completed just 80 years before. Because of their numbers they prevailed and in 1729 the Presbyterian Church passed the Adopting Act which formally adopted the Westminster Standards as its official confession of faith.
But the new church had left the Exercise behind as it structured its government. In its place, the presbyteries of the New World involved themselves in the rigorous preparation of a competent ministry, the extension of the church, and the exercise of discipline. It is interesting to note that while the colonies were fiercely independent of each other, the Presbyterians saw themselves as one church bridging all geo-political boundaries. It was their organized and structured operations within the boundaries of regional presbyteries that shaped the American Presbyterian movement and gave it a unique and non-European flavor.
6. A Reflective Analysis
This chapter in the history of Reformed polity, which spans its first two centuries, helps us to understand some important lessons.
A. Changes in polity occur as the church continues to reform. If we applaud the radical changes in church government which occurred at the time of the Protestant Reformation, we should be willing to applaud later changes as more is understood about the structure of Christ’s Church. It took 14 centuries to become so profoundly corrupted both doctrinally and governmentally that a reformation was required. We have only been working on this new paradigm for church government for the last four-and-a-half centuries and we can expect to continue to see appropriate biblical adjustments as time passes.
B. The polity of the 16th century Reformers should not be considered normative It is fashionable to appeal to the views of John Calvin and John Knox with respect to polity issues such as the role of the minister, the place of church discipline and structure of the local church. But the times in which those men lived affected the way in which they developed their governmental structures. Geneva was a city-state ruled by the church. The Presbyterians in Scotland during the time of Knox never had a day of peace from severe persecution and oppression.
Who among us today would interpret I Corinthians 14 in such a way as to develop the Exercise? In fact, Calvin’s Friday morning meetings were so fraught with potential abuse that they never lasted beyond his lifetime. The theology of the Anabaptists and their concept of the clergy constantly dogged the heels of the practice of the Exercise. So we should be careful to guard against abuses of appeal to the views of the reformers with respect to issues of church government.
C. Spiritual oversight and administration are two elements of church government which must constantly be kept in balance. Distortions in the outworking of church polity will follow wherever these two are not carefully monitored. It was easy in Calvin’s Geneva to keep a church in control. It was less easy in Scotland and England where the territory was larger and the climate of tolerance was more hostile. It was less easy still in the colonies where distances militated against the churches’ leaders meeting frequently on a regional and national level.
An axiom which could be derived from the study of this period of church history is that the greater the distance between the churches, the more focus there is on administrative matters. Administration is not an evil. It is part of what the church must do. But neither may it be allowed to become the only thing that the church does. Who among us during the description of the practice of the Exercise did not say, “That’s what our presbytery should be doing today”? Who among us has not lamented, “Why is there no time set aside within our presbytery meetings when we can really study and debate issues in depth?”
Roy Blackwood laments, “We hear on the one hand of a desperate need to recruit young people and newcomers who will early and quickly demonstrate a practical sense of responsibility for the development and expansion of the church. And we hear on the other hand of elders who will not allow young people to have such responsibilities because they are suspicious of their level of maturity....The Reformers believed that God had provided an age-designated one room school type of Exercise meeting so that the spiritually young could grow and that the elders could become more keenly aware of the spiritual maturity that God keeps bringing into their midst.”
Conclusion
That inclination you’ve had to lose patience when your presbytery gets bogged down in details...that sense of frustration at having a great collection of theological minds gathered and then watching them debate the finer points of the treasurer’s audit...the countless other incongruities that puzzle you about the meeting of your own presbytery ...you now have an explanation. It wasn’t always that way. But it is the price we pay for the maturity of a great heritage of Presbyterian government.
Ross Graham is the General Secretary of the Committee of Home Missions and Church Extension of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The above material was prepared for a conference of Home Missionaries and is the first in a series. We hope to print the others in future issues of Ordained Servant.